Alien TrespassReview

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This 1950's sci-fi homage is trespassing in theaters.

By Christopher Monfette

Somewhere between parody and homage there's just doing something badly. Alien Trespass was clearly made with the intention to both emulate and satirize the classic B-movie sci-fi films of the 1950s – and not in a semi-serious Roland Emmerich kind of way, but in a careful replication of the era, complete with flying saucers, sub-par effects and some overly hammy acting. The problem, unfortunately, is that the movie aims to have it both ways and quite simply can't, straddling the cinematic line for about 10 minutes before falling gracelessly into its own confused voice.

A flying saucer crashes into the desert mountains of California, just outside a small, quaint, white-picket-fence kind of a town, where the local diner is always cooking up 35-cent breakfasts, the cops' biggest problem is the local greaser, the wives are dressed in pearls and high-heels and the men smoke pipes and sip martinis while grilling up steaks on the back lawn. Carried on the ship is a deadly creature called a Ghota – an upright phallus with tentacles and a giant, red eye – that quickly escapes into the wild. Also aboard the vessel is the creature's captor, a galactic agent named Urp, who hijacks the body of Professor Ted Lewis (Eric McCormack) and sets out to reclaim his alien prisoner. The Ghota makes its slow way toward the town, feeding off brainless police officers, fornicating teenagers and the town drunk in an effort to consume enough material to divide and reproduce. Urp must enlist the help of a local waitress to track down and destroy the creatures in order to save mankind.

The set-up is appropriately mid-century, a good approximation of the kind of alien tales one might expect from the late 1950s, as is the film's overall aesthetic. If Alien Trespass succeeds in any regard, it's simply in creating a world that feels, at least in spirit, like an authentic – or perhaps nostalgic – depiction of the period. The sets, the costumes, the cars, the vocal affectations – neither parody nor slavish recreation. And the visual effects, despite being created by CG to appear properly low-tech, feel enough like large plastic creatures and saucers on strings to blend seamlessly into the spirit of the piece. All in all, the design of the film is considerably more effective than its substance.

The problem lies with the script – or perhaps just the very conceit – in that its relative level of seriousness stops it from being scary, classic, entertaining or funny. Had the film been more interested in gently ribbing the genre, there might have been more freedom to bring the hilarity. It's possible that the movie attempts to do this in places, but the jokes are just so underplayed or outright un-funny that they go almost wholly beneath the radar. Instead, for better or worse, the film aims to be a rather straightforward recreation, and considering that audiences have since evolved about 60 years in the meantime, it fails to feel at all relevant.

So unless you're 70 or 80 years old, you likely won't connect Alien Trespass to any particular cinematic experience in your life, or recall its forebears as a part of your own filmic history. And since the film is neither funny nor gripping, you'd be better off renting some of the true classics like those featured in the film itself – namely, The Blob.

Overall, Alien Trespass is an inspired, yet almost completely unsuccessful, attempt to recapture the magic of a by-gone era which still exists on DVD or late-night television. Old episodes of MST3K are more entertaining and serve almost the same purpose. Otherwise, this sci-fi redux might make you feel like bad, period-piece sci-fi is trespassing in your theaters.